Today, we’re exploring the debut of “songcoins,” the latest experiment at the intersection of music and crypto.

On Monday, Coop Records launched $RISE from San Holo, pegged to the tenth anniversary of his beloved track “We Rise,” and $CTRL from Blond:ish, tied to the debut of an unreleased song called “Take Control.” With over 750 tracks in their catalog, founder Cooper Turley is betting big that coins, not collectibles, will define the next era of onchain music.

As many of you know, I come from a music background and care deeply about using this technology to empower artists and build a fairer system in an industry that’s long been stacked against them. At the same time, I’ve also been somewhat skeptical of the “content coin” model championed by Base creator Jesse Pollak. I even wrote an op-ed earlier this year outlining my concerns around financialization and the risks of over-tokenizing media without clear context or utility.

Full disclosure: Turley is a friend, as well as an early investor and advisor to Now Media. I know him to be a well-intentioned builder who shares a commitment to leveraging onchain technology in service of artists and cultural creators.

So what exactly are songcoins? And do they hold more promise than content coins? Let’s unpack what this all means.

What Are Songcoins?

Songcoins are single-track, fungible tokens launched by Coop Records on Base via Doppler Protocol. Each track gets its own token, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens per song at a market cap of $4,000. Initial allocation is:

5% to the artist
5% to Coop Records
90% to the liquidity pool, vested over 90 days
1% swap fee on Uniswap, shared with artists and labels

There’s no pre-sale or migration. Tokens trade publicly right away, making them a real-time market signal theoretically tied to each track’s popularity.

Coop Records is planning to launch a mobile app designed to make songcoin discovery and participation seamless for fans, with no prior crypto experience required.

The Launch

By clearly stating upfront that he was launching two tokens with many more to follow, Turley managed expectations early and avoided the pitfall Pollak encountered when he debuted the first content coin without context, then immediately launched a second that cannibalized early investors and led to backlash.

San Holo’s $RISE token peaked at a $180K market cap roughly 90 minutes after launch and now sits at $73K. Blond:ish’s $CTRL token hit a $115K peak about four hours after release and currently holds at $52K. A familiar pattern: initial hype followed by swift correction. Pretty much what you’d expect in this attention economy.

But that volatility underscores the core tradeoff. Songcoins aren’t collectibles. They are liquid, tradable assets subject to market whims. And without deeper hooks or long-term incentives, most will struggle to hold attention for more than a news cycle. Perhaps that’s ok though. We expect most singles to have their moment and then fade from the charts. Not to mention, artists still see upside. Despite the downtrend, San Holo’s 5% cut is currently worth around $3,560 — the equivalent of 1.5 million Spotify streams if he were receiving 100% of royalties, which very few artists do.

Pros and Cons

There’s plenty to like about the songcoin model. Artists retain 5% of their token supply and share in protocol fees, giving them direct upside as attention grows. Launching with significant liquidity pools on Uniswap enables immediate price discovery, while the absence of a presale eliminates the perception of insiders front-running the market. Fans can also be rewarded. Early participation can earn them free tokens, and the open market allows for speculation, signaling, and even memetic virality.

But there are also question marks. Songcoins currently have no utility beyond market value: they don’t confer rights, governance, or access. Without integration into fan experiences such as token-gated content, exclusive drops, or social mechanics, the model risks becoming another speculation-first system with limited staying power. The one-token-per-song approach could also fragment liquidity, making it harder for any single coin to sustain long-term trading volume in the short-term attention economy. It’s still unclear whether a track’s mainstream success will consistently translate into upward price movement. Cultural relevance doesn’t always align with token dynamics.

I spoke with Turley to better understand the thinking behind songcoins, how Coop Recs is approaching this new model, and to address these opportunities and concerns.

Cooper Turley. Credit: Courtesy of Coop Records

Matt Medved: What do you see as the key advantages — and potential pitfalls — of using fungible tokens over NFTs for music?

Cooper Turley: Coins are way easier to distribute and buy in small chunks. The tradeoff is volatility, but we’re confident we can use coins to let fans earn their first crypto for actions they take every day, like pre-saves, posting videos, and coming to shows.

We’re deeply aware of all the critiques and learnings from the last few years and are using all of that to supercharge this next wave of onchain music.

With one token per track, how do you avoid liquidity fragmentation in a short-term attention economy as the catalog grows?

Fragmentation is inevitable. We don’t expect every song to pop off. We want to create the infrastructure for people to be early to songs that are trending in real time. In the same way that there are ebbs and flows in streaming, the same will exist with coins. We hope to tie songcoins back to larger flywheels inspired by apps like Zora.

Are there plans to add utility to songcoins beyond speculation, like access, rewards, or fan perks?

In the future, absolutely. The more immediate focus is on providing quick insights into how a song is performing on Spotify and TikTok, and making it easy to earn your first coins for supporting songs in the real world.

How do you see the relationship between a track’s mainstream success and its token’s market performance?

If we do this well, the market and the song’s virality should be tightly coupled. We already see this playing out with trendcoins on TikTok and think we can do the same thing with songs through a more curated music discovery and trading platform.

What lessons did you take from earlier content coin experiments (and backlash), and how did they shape your approach with songcoins?

Coop Recs is highly curated for a reason. We understand this is a new primitive and still a very niche market. We’re working closely with our community and roster to bring a select few songs to market each week. Our goal is to ship a seamless mobile app that requires no crypto knowledge before opening the floodgates. We want people to trust that songs on Coop are those that have resonance and attention in the real world.

Conclusion

Songcoins represent an ambitious attempt to rethink how music is valued in an onchain world. By creating liquid markets around individual tracks, Coop Records is testing whether cultural momentum in music can be captured financially, letting fans do more than stream a song and giving artists a direct stake in its rise.

It’s too early to say whether songcoins will endure or go the way of music NFTs. But by combining artist ownership with real-time price discovery, songcoins challenge the passive dynamics of the streaming era and hint at a more participatory, market-driven future for music. That alone makes them worth paying attention to.

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